From 12b53c891d44f91b9a2a8b8a79d4e2d5623211da Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: lorenzo bruno <134690345+l-br1@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:05:22 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 1/3] Add Cardano Builder Interviews documentation This document captures insights from structured interviews with five DApp/DeFi teams building on Cardano, discussing their experiences, challenges, and suggestions for improvement. --- docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx | 169 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 169 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx diff --git a/docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx b/docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b96df37 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx @@ -0,0 +1,169 @@ + +# Cardano Builder Interviews + +Enterprises tell us what they might do with Cardano. Builders tell us what is actually happening on-chain today. To capture that operational perspective, STORM Partners conducted structured interviews with five DApp/DeFi teams: + +- DeltaDeFi – High frequency trading orderbook and leverage engine. + +- Surf (ex Flow) – Smart order routing layer for swaps and liquidity. + +- Bodega Market – Onchain prediction markets and event trading. + +- SteelSwap – DEX aggregator with leveraged trading support. + +- Strike Finance – Perpetuals and permissionless lending with isolated risk markets. + + +These teams are shipping contracts, closing audits, fighting latency, acquiring users, and competing with every other chain in real time. Their insights cut through theory and highlight the practical bottlenecks that will shape Cardano’s trajectory to 2030. + +Conversations focused on three areas: + +1. What Cardano gets right for building trading and DeFi products. + +2. What blocks them from growing TVL, volume, and users. + +3. What they would need to double down on Cardano over the next 2 to 3 years. + + +## 1. Who we spoke with + +- Early and mid-stage DeFi teams building live contracts deployments on Cardano + +- Founders and core contributors with direct responsibility for product, risk, and growth. + +- Protocols already handling real user funds, audits, and operational risk. + + +These, alongside many other builders, are the real people currently trying to make Cardano DeFi usable for traders and retail users. + +## 2. What they like about building on Cardano + +Across teams, there is a repeated, strong alignment with Cardano’s technical and philosophical direction: + +- EUTxO model for safety and parallelisation. Builders repeatedly stressed that Cardano’s transaction model is structurally safer for complex financial flows and avoids some historic pitfalls of account-based chains. + +- Low base fees and predictable costs. Gas cost stability lets them offer clearer fee schedules to users, even if absolute throughput is not yet ideal. + +- Long-termism and formal methods. Teams trust that protocol changes are considered and that breaking changes are rare. That stability matters for financial contracts that may need to run for years. + +- Potential of scaling stack. Hydra, Leios, Midgard, and partnerchain work are seen as promising, provided they become production ready with clear messaging and tool support. + + +In short: builders are not asking for a different chain. They want Cardano to build upon their strengths, and finish what it started in terms of roadmap development while removing practical adoption frictions. + +## 3. What blocks them today + +Despite a strong alignment on vision, all five teams described similar hard blockers. + +### 3.1. Low DeFi participation among ADA holders + +- Daily active DeFi wallets on Cardano remain low compared to the size of the ADA holder base. + +- Teams see a cultural and trust gap: many ADA holders stake and hold but rarely interact with DeFi protocols, even when risk controls are conservative. + +- Without more users, TVL and volume stagnate, which makes it harder to attract market makers and external liquidity. + + +### 3.2. Weak stablecoin and cross-chain liquidity + +- Deep, CEX-reachable stablecoin liquidity is seen as the primary flywheel. + +- Builders are forced to route trades through thin pools, synthetic assets, or external bridges, which increases slippage and risk. + +- Lack of robust BTC, ETH and other major asset liquidity on Cardano limits the appeal for pro traders and cross-chain users. + + +### 3.3. Latency and wallet UX for trading use cases + +- For leverage, margin and active trading, a 5–10 second delay between clicks and transaction confirmation is described as “simply too slow.” + +- Wallet flows are often multi-step and confusing for non-native users, especially around collateral, UTxO management and signing flows. + +- Some teams resort to non-ideal patterns or offchain workarounds to hide complexity, which creates maintenance and security risk. + + +### 3.4. Infrastructure and tooling gaps + +- Teams mentioned early friction around UTxO selection, minUTxO, transaction building and reliable simulation environments. + +- Indexers, liquidation oracles, congestion-aware risk engines and standardised integration blueprints are still patchy. + +- Projects often reinvent similar infra pieces instead of reusing shared components. + + +### 3.5. Funding, growth and communication + +- Several teams see a misalignment between grant programs that focus on open-source infra and the needs of revenue-seeking DApps that must pay salaries and grow users. + +- Communication about protocol R&D and scaling (for example around new versions of core components or other types of work) is described as opaque or sporadic. + +- Builders want more proactive outreach from governance bodies and committees, not just passive funding forms. + + +## 4. When they would double down on Cardano + +Teams were clear about what would make them commit even more strongly to Cardano over the next cycle. + +- Production-grade scaling and messaging. Hydra, Leios or other scaling solutions need to cross the line from “promising research” to stable, documented products with clear owner messaging and support. + +- A deliberate stablecoin and liquidity strategy. Builders asked for a coordinated initiative around stablecoin liquidity, listings and cross-chain assets. + +- Wallet and UX upgrades focused on trading. Streamlined flows for approvals, margin management and batch transactions would immediately reduce friction and support more complex products. + +- Business-oriented support. Examples include co-investment lanes for revenue-seeking DApps with legal wrappers, BD introductions to market makers and CEXs, and shared marketing or growth pilots aimed at DeFi user acquisition. + +- A real builders forum or consortium. Teams want a structured way to align on shared infra needs, avoid duplication and give direct feedback into Product and Governance committees. + + +## 5. Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030 + +The builder interviews line up closely with the Cardano Vision/Strategy 2030 draft: they mostly validate the direction, while sharpening where execution will matter most for DeFi. + +Three links stand out: + +### 5.1 DeFi as a core vertical is validated, but must be executed around liquidity and UX + +Strategy 2030 already names DeFi as a high value vertical and sets ambitious KPIs for TVL, MAUs and protocol revenue. Builders confirm the logic, but stress that success will hinge on: + +- Deep stablecoin and blue chip asset liquidity that traders and market makers actually use + +- Faster, smoother wallet and transaction UX for trading style use cases + +- Shared infra components (indexers, risk engines, oracles) that protocols can plug into instead of rebuilding alone + + +In other words, the DeFi pillar is directionally right, and these interviews clarify where the practical bottlenecks are likely to be. + +### 5.2 Critical infrastructure programs are tackling the right structural gaps. + +The emerging Cardano Critical Infrastructure Budget is targeting most of the categories that builders flagged as out of reach for individual teams, and highly beneficial for DeFi growth: tier 1 stablecoins, bridges, oracles, analytics, and institutional grade custody and wallets. + +If these integrations land, they will directly support several Strategy 2030 pillars: + +- Pillar 1 (Infrastructure & Research) on interoperability, security and observability + +- Pillar 2 (Adoption & Utility) on secure liquidity onramps and better enterprise grade UX for financial products + + +From the builders’ perspective, it seems these features are necessary enablers for the DeFi and trading goals written into their product roadmaps. + + + +### 5.3 User and liquidity activation needs to be treated as a first class workstream. + +The strategy targets 1M monthly active users, higher transaction volumes and materially higher TVL by 2030 + +The Cardano Interviews show a clear risk: Cardano can have strong infra and thoughtful governance, yet still underperform in these metrics if most ADA holders continue to stake and hold without ever touching DeFi. + +Teams repeatedly pointed to low DeFi engagement as their main growth limit. To close that gap, it would be consistent with Strategy 2030 to: + +- Make “first DeFi action” flows a design focus inside the Experience and Community pillars (simple, guided, non degen entry products) + +- Align incentive programs, education and wallets around a small set of audited, blue chip protocols that can safely onboard non specialist users + +- Track adoption metrics that builders care about, such as active DeFi wallets as a share of total MAU, stablecoin share of volume, and cross chain inflows reaching Cardano DApps. + + +## Conclusion + +Taken together, the DApp interviews do not argue for a different Vision or Strategy. They reinforce the existing focus on DeFi and critical infrastructure, while highlighting a complementary priority: turning more ADA holders into confident DeFi users so that the infrastructure, KPIs and governance work translate into visible liquidity and usage on the network. From 9281807c16828540d08e6b8081fc2272cba69bd1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: lorenzo bruno <134690345+l-br1@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:12:05 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 2/3] Add enterprise interviews documentation Document insights from enterprise interviews regarding blockchain adoption across various sectors, including finance, humanitarian, luxury, and telecommunications. --- docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx | 227 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 227 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx diff --git a/docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx b/docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f238afa --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx @@ -0,0 +1,227 @@ + +# Enterprise interviews + +As part of preparing the Cardano Vision and Strategy 2030 drafts, STORM Partners ran 11 semi structured interviews with senior leaders at the following organisations: + +- Maerki Baumann (ARCHIP) – Swiss private bank, crypto focused unit + +- Incore Bank – Swiss digital asset bank + +- Cité Gestion – Swiss private bank, now part of EFG + +- Kaleido Private Bank – Swiss private bank running on Incore infrastructure + +- Hublot – luxury watch brand + +- Bondy – for profit reforestation and carbon credit company + +- ICRC – International Committee of the Red Cross + +- MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières + +- UNICC – UN International Computing Centre + +- Vodafone / Pairpoint – global telco and IoT network operator + +- Fongit – Geneva based innovation foundation and incubator + + +The calls focused on three simple questions: + +1. Where blockchain could realistically solve a problem in their organisation. + +2. Under which conditions Cardano would be a serious option. + +3. What would block them over the next 12 to 24 months. + + +The insights below are aggregated by sector. They do not attribute any specific statement to a named organisation. + +## 1. Regulated finance and banking + +Covers the Swiss banks in the sample, including digital asset providers and private banks that already support ADA custody or staking. + +### What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano + +- Tokenisation that actually simplifies issuance, lifecycle management, and corporate actions instead of adding extra overhead. + +- Simple, explainable yield and access products for their clients, with clear risk frameworks. + +- Robust infrastructure with predictable fees, clear SLAs, and reliable operations. + +- Credible stablecoin rails and on and off ramp options in Swiss and EU markets. + + +### What stops them from adopting + +- Compliance and regulatory uncertainty. Internal control functions are not comfortable with how to monitor and audit on-chain activity. + +- Legacy core banking systems that are expensive to integrate with new rails. + +- Tokenisation markets that are still slow, with limited client demand and unclear revenue upside. + +- Limited internal capacity. They cannot spare teams to co design experiments that are far from current revenue. + + +### When this segment would consider Cardano pilots + +- Pilots are co-funded, light touch on internal IT, and aligned with existing digital asset roadmaps. + +- External partners carry most of the delivery and maintenance load, while banks keep governance and compliance oversight. + +- The regulatory story is clear enough that they can defend it to auditors and supervisors. + +- Solutions are chain agnostic at the product level, with Cardano as one rail among several. + + +### Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030 + +- Cardano does not win banks by “being decentralised/robust”, but by cutting cost and complexity while staying inside regulatory guardrails. + +- Strategy 2030 should treat regulated finance as a distinct workstream that needs focused effort on stablecoins, compliance tooling, and enterprise delivery partners. + + +## 2. Humanitarian and impact organisations + +Covers humanitarian NGOs, a UN treasury infrastructure body, and an impact ReFi venture working on reforestation and carbon credits. + +### What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano + +- Transparent but privacy-aware tracking of funds, aid, or climate impact, with strong protection for vulnerable populations. + +- Tools that reduce operational costs in supply chains, cash transfers, and reporting to donors and authorities. + +- Stablecoin and payment rails that can function in fragile markets and reduce fees. + +- Funding mechanisms that support long term operations, not just short term pilots. + + +### What stops them from adopting + +- Deep scepticism of “shiny innovation” projects that generate blogs but do not survive budget cuts or staff turnover. + +- Privacy, security, and political risk concerns around putting operational data on public infrastructure. + +- Limited internal capacity to own, maintain, and govern solutions once external funding or consultants leave. + +- Need to preserve neutrality and independence while working with any technology partner. + + +### When this segment would consider Cardano pilots + +- The pilot targets a concrete operational problem with clear cost savings or impact metrics, not generic “blockchain for good”. + +- Designs are privacy preserving and frugal from day one. + +- There is a credible plan for maintenance and support beyond the initial grant period. + +- Governance and narrative remain under the control of the humanitarian actor, not the chain. + + +### Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030 + +If Cardano wants to be the chain that “systems that cannot afford to fail” can trust, it needs to prove it in a few serious humanitarian and impact deployments. Strategy 2030 should explicitly address privacy preserving infra, long-term support models, and sober expectations around humanitarian work. + +## 3. Consumer and luxury brands + +### What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano + +- Digital product passports that support authenticity, resale, servicing, and product storytelling for physical goods. + +- Customer engagement tools that are brand aligned and low friction, where blockchain is invisible to end users. + +- Efficiency gains that reduce manual work in current Excel and email heavy processes. + + +### What stops them from adopting + +- Blockchain is not a core priority compared with other digital and operational initiatives. + +- Internal stakeholders are wary of reputational risk from volatile crypto markets or hype driven projects. + +- Lack of plug and play solutions that integrate with existing CRM, ecommerce, and warranty systems. + + +### When this segment would consider Cardano pilots + +- The use case clearly improves an existing process or campaign, instead of being an add on gimmick. + +- Delivery can be handled by external partners, with minimal internal workload and no disruption to brand processes. + +- The brand can separate speculative token markets from core customer experience. + + +### Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030 + +● Consumer and luxury brands will be fast followers. Cardano should position itself as a safe, design friendly platform for digital product passports and loyalty, backed by agencies and integrators that can absorb complexity. + +## 4. Telco, IoT and innovation ecosystems + +Covers a global telco and IoT platform operator plus a public innovation foundation that supports hundreds of startups. + +### What this segment wants from blockchain and Cardano + +Scalable infrastructure for machine identity, IoT trust anchors, and machine to machine payments. + +- Clear, chain agnostic funding and support programs their startups can plug into, without forcing a single protocol choice. + +- Stablecoin rails and tokenisation primitives for cross border payments and asset fractionalisation in their verticals. + + +### What stops them from adopting + +- Heavy legacy systems and long change cycles in large enterprises.\ + +- Regulatory and internal governance friction around new payment and data flows. + +- Requirement to remain neutral as public or multi stakeholder institutions, so they cannot “pick Cardano” as an exclusive partner. + +- Limited access to local teams that can deliver robust pilots on realistic budgets. + + +### When this segment would consider Cardano pilots + +- Cardano solutions plug into their existing tech stacks, instead of demanding bespoke architectures. + +- External partners carry the delivery work, with clear SLAs and roadmaps. + +- There are obvious, repeatable funding lanes, for example specific Catalyst tracks for enterprise pilots or startup cohorts. + + +### Implications for Vision/Strategy 2030 + +- Enterprise and startup ecosystems expect blockchains to integrate into their existing funnels. Cardano will need to build reference architectures, co-branded startup programs, and chain neutral collaboration models if it wants to show up in these deal flows. + + +## 5. Cross sector messages from enterprise interviews + +Across banking, humanitarian, impact, luxury, telco, and innovation participants, three simple messages repeat: + +### 5.1 Solve sharp, high-value problems, not “blockchain in general” + +Every organisation came with a short list of painful workflows where they might consider new tech: cross-border payments, traceability, digital product passports, treasury efficiency, fundraising and donor engagement. The Cardano Strategy 2030 should therefore invest in sector-specific use-case discovery (per vertical and region) and then run a full BD pipeline around those use cases: from problem framing and regulatory mapping, to solution blueprints, to co-funded pilot design and execution. The gap today is not ideas, but a structured path that connects real enterprise pain points to concrete Cardano pilots. + +### 5.2 Compliance, UX, and support decide adoption. + +Technical alignment and “values fit” with Cardano are appreciated, but they only translate into pilots when three conditions hold: + +(a) compliance teams can understand and audit transactions, + +(b) the UX is simple enough that internal teams do not have to retrain everyone, and (c) there is a credible partner on the hook for integration, support and incident response. + +For banks and NGOs in particular, this means shipping reference architectures with ready-to-use risk memos, audit paths, and playbooks for regulators, alongside wallet and L2 UX that hides on-chain complexity behind familiar interfaces. This maps + +cleanly to Strategy 2030’s focus on “invisible” usage, enterprise-grade security, and developer experience, but the interviews suggest execution is still patchy and needs to be productised. + +### 5.3 Adoption will be chain agnostic. + +Most participants are open to using Cardano but will not commit exclusively. Cardano needs to be the practical choice where it is genuinely better, not just philosophically closer. + +Large enterprises, multilateral organisations and NGOs repeatedly stressed that they will not commit to “one chain only”. + +- For treasury and payments work they expect to route flows where liquidity, compliance comfort and integration effort are best. + +- For tokenisation and traceability, they expect interoperability with existing stacks (SAP, Oracle, core banking) and other L1s. + + +Strategy 2030’s emphasis on cross-chain interoperability, the partnerchain framework, and L2s or sidechains is therefore not optional but central. Cardano’s edge will come from being the best execution and trust layer for specific high value workflows, while fitting into a multi chain, multi vendor reality. Hybrid application patterns, where Cardano based partnerchains (such as Midnight) can act as compliance, data, or privacy extensions for other chains rather than strict competitors, are a key part of that story. From 263027d0de6047e1d921c30593256b7025702ddf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Samuel Leathers Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2025 22:31:42 -0500 Subject: [PATCH 3/3] restructure business interviews to accomadate more pages --- docs/business-interviews/_category_.yml | 4 ++++ .../business-interviews.md} | 0 .../dapp-interviews.md} | 10 ++++++++-- .../enterprise-interviews.md} | 6 ++++++ 4 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) create mode 100644 docs/business-interviews/_category_.yml rename docs/{business-interviews.mdx => business-interviews/business-interviews.md} (100%) rename docs/{cardano_builder_interviews.mdx => business-interviews/dapp-interviews.md} (97%) rename docs/{enterprise_interviews.mdx => business-interviews/enterprise-interviews.md} (98%) diff --git a/docs/business-interviews/_category_.yml b/docs/business-interviews/_category_.yml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..abd11c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/business-interviews/_category_.yml @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +position: 3 # float position is supported +label: 'Business Interviews' +collapsible: true # make the category collapsible +collapsed: false # keep the category open by default diff --git a/docs/business-interviews.mdx b/docs/business-interviews/business-interviews.md similarity index 100% rename from docs/business-interviews.mdx rename to docs/business-interviews/business-interviews.md diff --git a/docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx b/docs/business-interviews/dapp-interviews.md similarity index 97% rename from docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx rename to docs/business-interviews/dapp-interviews.md index b96df37..8013a77 100644 --- a/docs/cardano_builder_interviews.mdx +++ b/docs/business-interviews/dapp-interviews.md @@ -1,5 +1,11 @@ - -# Cardano Builder Interviews +--- +title: Decentralized Application Interviews +sidebar_label: Decentralized Application Interviews +sidebar_position: 3 +slug: /business-interviews/builders +--- + +# Decentralized Application Interviews Enterprises tell us what they might do with Cardano. Builders tell us what is actually happening on-chain today. To capture that operational perspective, STORM Partners conducted structured interviews with five DApp/DeFi teams: diff --git a/docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx b/docs/business-interviews/enterprise-interviews.md similarity index 98% rename from docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx rename to docs/business-interviews/enterprise-interviews.md index f238afa..ca07109 100644 --- a/docs/enterprise_interviews.mdx +++ b/docs/business-interviews/enterprise-interviews.md @@ -1,3 +1,9 @@ +--- +title: Enterprise Interviews +sidebar_label: Enterprise Interviews +sidebar_position: 1 +slug: /business-interviews/enterprise +--- # Enterprise interviews